In Las Vegas, Kasich doesn't make presidential pitch

Monday

Mar 31, 2014 at 12:01 AMMar 31, 2014 at 8:57 AM

LAS VEGAS - Michael Makovsky walked away from Gov. John Kasich's speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition on Saturday wondering why there was no foreign policy in it. "I honestly didn't think he sounded like he wanted to run for president," said Makovsky, chief executive of a Jewish security research group in Washington.

Joe Vardon, The Columbus Dispatch

LAS VEGAS — Michael Makovsky walked away from Gov. John Kasich’s speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition on Saturday wondering why there was no foreign policy in it.

“I honestly didn’t think he sounded like he wanted to run for president,” said Makovsky, chief executive of a Jewish security research group in Washington.

Kasich was among the headliners of the weekend conference of about 300 mostly wealthy, Jewish GOP donors at the Venetian, a resort casino owned by Sheldon Adelson, a megadonor to past Republican presidential campaigns.

The event was named the “Adelson primary” by The Washington Post because of its slate of high-profile GOP governors such as New Jersey’s Chris Christie, Wisconsin’s Scott Walker and Kasich and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who were said to be trying to win Adelson’s support for a possible 2016 presidential bid.

If anything was cleared up about Kasich’s prospects in that field, it would be that he says he isn’t thinking about those prospects, and that some of the GOP’s biggest campaign donors and bundlers aren’t thinking about Kasich, at least not in that way.

Kasich is running for re-election this year against likely Democratic nominee Ed FitzGerald, and his speech was entirely about Ohio. He said afterward that he hoped the trip would net him campaign cash from Adelson and others for his 2014 race.

And in interviews with more than a dozen conference attendees, some of them speaking on the condition of anonymity, it sounded as if Kasich was barely on the periphery of the field of potential GOP presidential candidates. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul was on the lips of many, as were Christie, Walker, Bush, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, among others.

“No, uh-uh, he’s not one of them, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he runs anyway,” said a GOP donor who asked not to be named.

Ari Fleischer, who served as press secretary for former President George W. Bush, said, “I have no idea if he is going to run or not going to run; he didn’t give any hints that he was going to run, and he’s not usually mentioned as someone who is running.” Fleischer was complimentary of Kasich’s speech.

Tim Phillips, president of the Koch-brothers-backed organization Americans for Prosperity, said he has no indication that Kasich plans to run in two years, but if the Ohioan does, “he’d be a serious candidate, from day one.”

The reality of Kasich’s political future is that virtually nothing is possible without an election victory this fall. The most-recent Quinnipiac poll showed him with a 5 percentage-point edge over FitzGerald, the Cuyahoga County executive.

But Walker is in the same boat, in that he faces re-election this fall, and yet his speech in Las Vegas led with foreign policy.

In an attempt to illustrate his chops as a potential president in charge of the military, Walker told the crowd he serves as “the commander in chief of the Wisconsin National Guard.”

Christie, who won re-election handily in Democratic-leaning New Jersey last year, hammered home that point during his speech. He has lingering problems with fallout from the controversy over lane closings on the George Washington Bridge executed by his aides for apparently political purposes, but the theme of his speech was largely about his New Jersey leadership and how it might translate into an improvement in U.S. foreign policy.

One of Christie’s strongest lines did not involve foreign policy, however. It came when he intimated that he was speaking as the current Republican Governors Association chairman overseeing fundraising for governor’s races this year, and not as a 2016 candidate.

“Here is what we stand for in 2014: Winning. That’s what we stand for,” he said. “It’s time for us as a party to stop killing each other.”